RCN

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The general secretary and chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, has refused to say if Sir David Nicholson has his confidence as the Chief executive of the NHS.

Peter Carter failed to reply to ITV News Correspondent Rupert Evelyn's question despite being asked several times for a clear answer:

NHS chief Sir David Nicholson has said he is "absolutely completely committed" to the NHS despite questions about his future. He has been criticised for his role in the Mid Staffs hospital deaths scandal.

For the past two-and-a-half years, the Government's consistent rhetoric has been that frontline posts and services are being protected.

Sadly, that is simply not the case. Tens of thousands of posts have gone and cuts are a now common occurrence on the ground, hitting jobs and services that patients rely on.

Nursing is not being protected in the same way as some other clinical professions, with posts and training places often cut for purely financial reasons.

We believe all clinical professions should be afforded equal protection. Currently, the nursing supply line is being choked and, given the importance of nursing to provide high quality care, this has worrying implications for patients.

Indeed, if this current trend continues, we fear the worst for patient care in this country.

Whilst David Cameron wastes billions on back-office restructuring, the front-line of the NHS is taking a battering. Ambulances are once again queuing up outside A&Es across England. In many hospitals there are simply not enough qualified nurses on the ground and healthcare assistants are increasingly being used to cover nurses’ roles.

Since David Cameron walked through the door of 10 Downing Street, over six thousand nursing posts have been lost. At the same time, he has spent £1 billion on redundancy packages for managers. Six-figure pay-outs to managers; P45s to nurses – what clearer illustration could there be of a Government with its priorities completely wrong?

The truth is that this Government has de-stabilised the NHS with a re-organisation nobody wanted and two years of real-terms spending cuts. It is this deadly combination of cuts and re-organisation that has proved toxic for the NHS and left it in a critical condition. Ministers are taking unacceptable risks with standards of patient care and they cannot continue to ignore the warnings from nurses’ and doctors’ leaders. They must urgently intervene to protect the NHS front-line as it cannot safely sustain job losses at this level.

The cumulative effect of those local decisions means that we are heading towards a crisis as far as the supply of nursing is concerned which will have an impact on patient care.

There has to be national oversight to make sure that we are getting the right numbers of healthcare professionals across the system.

Getting the nursing numbers right is fundamental, it's core.

If attention isn't paid to this warning from us we are very, very concerned about what the impact on care will be.

– Howard Catton, RCN head of policy

On a daily basis, nurses are telling us that they do not have enough staff to deliver good quality care.

Demand for services is continuing to rise. However, staffing levels are being slashed.

The £3 billion that the Treasury has clawed back from the NHS in the last two years should be reinvested back into vital jobs and services, for example in community provision, that would ultimately improve patient care.

The RCN believes that the NHS is sleepwalking into a nursing crisis in England that is drawing closer as the size of the cuts increase.

If the Government continues on its current path it will find itself stranded in a perfect storm of an ageing population with increasing healthcare demands, but without the adequate nursing workforce to deal with it.